Life is Beautiful, Schindler’s List, The Pianist, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas; I could go on. Needless to say, the film industry is not shy about depicting the pathos and brutality of the Holocaust and the war that raged alongside it.

It is a shame, then, that Au Revoir Les Enfants, Louis Malle’s 1987 semi-autobiographical film, has been all but forgotten. Despite the critical and public fanfare that surrounded it upon its release – the film dominated the 1988 César awards, received the prestigious Golden Lion at the 1987 Venice Film Festival, and was nominated for two Academy Awards – it has all but disappeared from the public eye. Therefore the BFI’s decision to screen it across the country from 30th January, in relation to Holocaust Memorial Day, should be welcomed with open arms.

Malle’s film follows Julien Quentin (Gaspard Manesse), a young boy returning to his Catholic boarding school in a wintry France that is still heavily under Nazi occupation. The rowdy, boisterous student body expands with the arrival of three new students, one of whom is Jean Bonnet (Raphaël Fejtö), whose shy, guarded nature, talent for arithmetic and piano, and relationship with a protective Père Jean (Philippe Morier-Genoud), attracts Quentin’s attention. Throughout his humdrum routine of exchanging jam for stamps with the school’s kitchen hand and play fighting on stilts, Quentin is inexorably drawn to his new classmate and the secret that he hides.

At the heart of this film lies the conflict between innocence and adolescence, as seen in the young boys’ supposed ‘grown-up’ attitudes, while the tempest of war rages outside and the effects of rationing are felt within. Every scene is gold: torchlit readings of the provocative Arabian Nights, the pangs of unrequited love, teenagers smoking cigarettes and nonchalantly discussing the existence of God. Manesse’s performance is of a maturity far beyond his years in its succinct portrayal of Quentin’s duality: that of a confident, swaggering young boy who still wets his bed and yearns for his mother. Indeed, some of the most potent scenes in the film are the close-ups of Quentin, manifesting the conflicted reflection of a boy caught between childhood and manhood.

Perhaps most striking is the lack of a cinematic score; instead, it is the restless sound of children laughing and shouting that underpins the film, reminding us of the vibrancy and carelessness of youth. Even in the film’s few moments of silence, there is a ticking clock, the creaking of a bed, the solicitous recital of a Hebrew prayer. When Malle does make use of music, however, it is always effective: the crescendo of Camille Saint-Saëns’s Rondo Capriccioso, accompanying a screening of Charlie Chaplin’s The Immigrant, projects a certain tragedy onto the faces of the watching children, confronted with love, comedy and escape.

A masterpiece of French cinema that deserves a renewal, in modern consciousness, of the reception it was once given, Au Revoir Les Enfants is a reminder of the Holocaust as it existed outside the walls of concentration camps. It is worth making the trip to the nearest BFI screening to experience a film that is both a celebration of the colour of life and a doleful memorial to stolen childhoods and friendships.